


Goodbye

by loveisgravity



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: EFA Fic Challenge 2018, F/F, Feels, Hospitals, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 06:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14635581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveisgravity/pseuds/loveisgravity
Summary: Nicole has to figure out what it means for her to say goodbye.





	Goodbye

Goodbye

 

Nicole stood before the glass entrance to the hospital and took a deep breath. She steeled herself for what was inside. She was in a city that felt so foreign it could have been a different country. She and Waverly flew in the previous night and Waverly practically kicked her out of the hotel room that morning.

The security guard stopped her at the front desk and Nicole realized just how emotionally blank she was when she didn’t chuckle at the authoritarian tone he gave her. Instead she stared off in the distance as the rent-a-cop wanded her for dangerous weapons.

She knew generally where she was headed. The seventh floor was the cancer ward and her father was in room 706. 

When she got the call from her step-mom three days ago, she wanted to pretend it never happened. That was the nature of the relationship she had with her dad. They largely pretended the other didn’t exist. 

But of course, Waverly could read her like a book, she knew immediately that something was wrong. Once she found out, Waverly insisted that they fly out together so that Nicole could say goodbye, fuck you, whatever she needed. 

Waverly planned the whole trip within the hour, even going so far as to email Nicole’s step-mom, a woman she’d never met, to let her know they were coming. Nicole was caught in the Waverly tornado. Nicole tried to explain that it wasn’t necessary, she had nothing to say to that man. But Waverly was fierce when she was determined. 

Nicole waited for the elevator to arrive and a woman with a large bouquet of flowers walked up and stood next to her. The woman flashed a fake smile as Nicole looked over at her. 

This was what really pissed Nicole off. She wanted Waverly’s first ever trip outside Purgatory to be to the ocean. Nicole had even planned it out in her head. She’d fly Waverly to the west coast so she could experience an airplane ride for the first time. Then she’d drive her out to the ocean, so Waverly could see the waves for the first time. They would sit on a towel, wrapped up in a blanket, Waverly sitting between her legs, and resting back against her chest. The cool breeze from the ocean giving them an excuse to snuggle in, they would disappear into the relentless crashes of the waves on the shore. Waverly’s first experience of the ocean would be watching the sun sink below the long grey line of the horizon, dazzling reds, oranges, pinks, and purples lighting up the sky and causing the clouds to catch fire. 

Instead, they were in fucking Pittsburgh. 

Nicole was in fucking Pittsburgh to visit her fucking father who was dying of fucking cancer. She didn’t really know why she was there. She only talked to him on Christmas and her birthday, and sometimes not even then. But Waverly insisted. She insisted that Nicole go, say her piece, and figure out how to mourn her father. 

Nicole’s relationship with her dad was complicated, to say the least, and Waverly kept reminding Nicole on the flight over that her mourning would be just as complicated, but it was still important to do. So here she was in an elevator that smelled like cleaning solvent and vaguely of urine. 

The woman with the flowers got off on the fifth floor and Nicole rode up the last two floors by herself. She stood away from the walls, afraid to touch anything.

When she stepped off the elevator, the first thing Nicole saw was a large sign telling all visitors to wash their hands often and that use of hand sanitizer was required before entering and after leaving any room. There was a large dispenser of hand sanitizer next to the sign. Nicole walked up and held her hand under the dispenser. A white foam fell into her palm and she quickly rubbed her hands together. On the double doors leading to the actual unit was another sign warning that all live plants were prohibited on this floor. This made Nicole wonder if the fifth floor had a similar warning. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t her rule to enforce anyway. 

She pushed her way through the door and stepped onto the ward. There were wheeled machines lining the hallway and nurses bustling into and out of the rooms. No one seemed to pay Nicole any attention. She walked confidently down the hall looking for room 706. 

It was halfway down the hall, just across from the nurse’s station. A young nurse with long brown hair smiled at Nicole and asked if she could help. Nicole pointed at the room number and the nurse nodded.

Nicole took a second dose of hand sanitizer before pushing open the room’s wide door. 

It was dark inside. And quiet. There were a couple machines blinking away next to the hospital bed, but none of them made a sound. 

Nicole’s step-mom, Linda, stood up and walked around the bed to greet her. Linda held out her hand and Nicole instinctively took it. Linda expressed how glad she was that Nicole could make it, how important this was to her father, and how she wanted him to know, in his final days, how loved he was. 

Nicole felt the bile rise in the back of her throat, but swallowed it back down, and nodded with a forced grin at Linda. 

“I’ll give you two some time together, then we can talk about the arrangements later if you want.” Said Linda softly. She stepped around Nicole and opened the door without taking the hand sanitizer first, and quietly closed the door behind her.

Nicole walked up to the end of the hospital bed and looked down at the face on the pillow. She barely recognized the person before her. He was human, for sure, but that was about as much resemblance as he had to the father Nicole remembered. This was a gaunt, old man with wizened grey hair mated to one side. He had at least a few days worth of a white beard that made him look homeless. His eyes were closed and his mouth partially open. 

Nicole sat down on the light green couch next to the bed and looked around the room. The IV dripped while the heart monitor measured out the beats of her father’s heart. Nicole turned around to look out the window behind her. It was a bright, spring day. She looked at the blue sky and white fluffy clouds in the gap between the curtains. Nicole stood up and opened the blinds completely and the room seemed to come to life, except for her dad, who didn’t even stir. 

She sat back on the couch and faced the shell of the man on the bed. She wanted to think deep thoughts, find words to express her feelings, or make her final peace with this man. But the way his mouth hung open made her feel thirsty, and it made her skin crawl to see where the IV entered his arm. 

This didn’t seem like the right time for those words. 

A nurse walked in and said hi. Nicole smiled weakly at her then looked back at her dad. The nurse checked his bag of fluids.

“Don’t worry, we’re keeping him very comfortable. You must be his daughter; Linda said you were coming today.”

Again Nicole smiled weakly. 

“I’ll leave you alone. Just press his call button if you need anything.” The nurse said before washing her hands and walking out. 

The room was silent again. Nicole rose and grabbed a small chair from the back wall and placed it so that she could both look at her dad and out the window. 

The white blankets were rumpled around his legs and his hands were on top of the covers. The far arm had the IV, the closer hand was just that, a hand. The knuckles seemed swollen under the spotted, sunken skin. Nicole reached out and ran her finger over one knuckle, to be sure it was real. The skin was soft. It was so much softer than she expected. 

It wasn’t that he hit her, or even yelled at her, but Nicole always thought of her father as a hard man. So the softness of his skin surprised her. She reached her fingers under his palm, and again, she was taken aback by the thin and smooth nature of his skin. His knuckles felt large in her palm and she wondered if he had arthritis. It wouldn’t surprise her, most old people do. She wondered if it would hurt him to squeeze his hand, as she ran a finger gently over the bumps of the joint. 

Nicole left her hand resting under his and thought back to her senior year in high school. Her grandmother had passed away and Nicole was sitting in the pew next to her dad at the funeral. During a hymn, Nicole reached out and took her father’s hand that was sitting on the bench beside him. As soon as her skin made contact with his, he burst out into tears and openly sobbed. It was the first time she saw him cry. It terrified and thrilled her to know she had that power over him. That was two years before he called her unnatural, he just said it like it was a natural thing to do. So he had power over her, too.

Sitting in the hospital room, she wondered if he would cry again if he knew she was holding his hand. Nicole looked out the window as a tear rolled stubbornly down her cheek. A church steeple rose up over the rows of house roofs like a conductor before an orchestra. There were birds flying from the telephone wire to the yards below. A woman was pushing a stroller down the sidewalk. 

Outside the window, it was so normal, so alive. Another tear found its way down her cheek as she laughed at the absurdity of so much life happening outside a window holding back death. She was sitting in a room with her dying father and a woman was pushing a baby down the sidewalk. 

Nicole imagined Waverly pushing a stroller down the sidewalk and the image made her grin. She felt her nose burn as more tears made their way down her cheeks. Waverly was so full of life, her joy showed through in her smile, it repelled death away from her. Nicole wanted that for her children. She wanted a partner in parenthood as strong and stubborn as a snowy daffodil in March. 

Nicole wondered what Waverly was doing right at that moment. She pulled out her phone and with one hand, she opened it and looked over her messages. 

Gus wrote that she heard about the trip and was thinking about her.

Wynonna sent a gif of a woman raising a hand to say stop and a message to fuck the old wanker and go get a drink instead.

Waverly wrote, Doing ok?, with several kiss and heart emojis following. 

The messages made Nicole smile and she quickly wrote back to Waverly that she was ok. Nicole thought about writing more but she looked up at her dad’s face and realized she wasn’t ready to put this all into words yet. 

She turned off the screen, made sure it was silenced and placed it face down on the couch next to the chair. 

Nicole took a deep breath and really looked at the man in the bed. This may be the last time she saw him alive, was there anything she needed to say to him? The words didn’t come. Just the hollow silence of empty thoughts. His hands were soft. He looked so old. He was dying. His hair was almost totally grey. His beard was white. 

She studied his body. There was no muscle tone left in him. His whole chest and stomach jumped with his heartbeat like a scared bunny. His faint breath barely pushed out his lips. This was what death looked like. A scared bunny and a gentle breeze. It was so different from the death she witnessed at the car accident. That had been swift and decisively final. This was lingering, quiet, gentle; a slowing, a measured slowing of the body. 

It suddenly struck Nicole that she was glad it could be this way. For as much pain as he caused her, she didn’t want to see him suffer, she couldn’t wish that on anyone. He was at peace and that was enough for her. She could allow herself to be at peace now, too.

Nicole rose from her seat, let go of his hand, and walked out of the room. She slipped out the door at the end of the hall, not making eye contact with anyone. She rode the elevator down and walked out the hospital door. 

A few dark clouds had emerged and were slowly enveloping the sky. She stepped out onto the crowded sidewalk and started walking down the road. She had no idea where she was going, she just needed to walk and breathe the fresh air. She walked past a small, Italian grocer. They had a tent out on the sidewalk and were grilling sausages and onions for sandwiches for the lunchtime crowd gathered around. Nicole slipped by, enjoying the smell but not feeling hungry. 

She walked past a sushi restaurant and made a mental note to tell Waverly about it when she got back to the hotel. But knowing Waverly, she most likely already had plans for all of their meals, researching vegan restaurants in the city.

There was a group of college-aged women sitting around a cafe table on the sidewalk outside a coffee shop. She knew she must be off her game because she couldn’t tell if they were just friends or “family.” A swift breeze blew her chin length, red hair into her face and as she raised her hands to push her hair back, she noticed that all the women were watching her.

Yeah- they’re family, she thought.

A cocky smirk grew across her face. She continued her walk, turning down one street and heading back on another. She wound her way around the neighborhood surrounding the hospital. She walked aimlessly, the cooling breeze of the approaching storm felt healing and fresh. 

When the first fat raindrop hit her forehead, she considered walking back to the coffee shop for shelter, but instead she stopped on the sidewalk. Everyone around her started to scurry or pulled umbrellas from bags. Nicole raised her face up and looked at the dark cloud above her. Another drop hit her face and it felt fitting. People pushed past her, but this felt right.

She stood on the sidewalk, her face to the rain, and just allowed it to touch her. 

Slowly, she walked back to her hotel across the street from the hospital. By the time she made it back to their room, Nicole’s hair and top were throughly wet. She felt chilled, but strong. 

Waverly jumped off the bed when the door opened and rushed over to Nicole.

Without hesitating, she took the cold, wet Nicole into her arms and held her for a couple minutes. 

“You ok?” Waverly asked.

“Yeah.” Nicole buried her nose in Waverly’s shoulder, holding tightly to her small waist. “Thank you for making me go. I needed to say goodbye.”


End file.
